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Why does nobody talk about topping wounds getting infected months later?
I kept seeing people top oaks in my neighborhood last spring, and three of those trees are now oozing black sap where the cuts were made. One of them had a whole branch die back six feet from the topping point. I called the homeowner and warned them back in April but they said I was just trying to scare them into paying for a proper prune. Now the city inspector showed up last week and tagged the tree for removal because of decay in the main trunk. How do you even get through to people that topping is not the same as pruning?
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harpercampbell6d ago
one of those trees are now oozing black sap" that part got me. People really think trees heal like people do, but they don't. That black sap is basically the tree screaming for help. I mean, it's wild how folks see a guy with a chainsaw and just assume he knows what he's doing. Topping is straight up mutilation, not pruning, and it opens the tree up to all kinds of rot and infection. By the time you see that oozing, the damage is already deep inside the trunk. It took years for my neighbor's topped maple to finally crack in half during a windstorm, and nobody listened to me either.
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phoenix_singh256d ago
That reminds me of this oak tree my grandpa had on his farm back in the day. He let some kid with a rental chainsaw "clean it up" and they hacked off all the big branches. Looked like a giant toothpick for years. Eventually the whole thing just rotted from the inside out and fell over one rainy night. Took out half the fence and none of the cows would go near that spot for like a month. People don't get that trees have their own kind of slow death and it's on their timeline, not ours.
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dylan_sanchez5d ago
Wait, hold up. The cows wouldn't go near that spot for a month? That's wild. Animals know way more than we give them credit for, man. They can probably smell the rot and decay happening before it's even visible to us. That's honestly creepy but also kinda beautiful in a sad way. And yeah, the tree rotting from the inside out is exactly what happens when people mess with them wrong. It's not like a cut on your finger that scabs over. Once that structural damage is done, it's done. The tree just keeps living on borrowed time until something finally gives.
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